They came...........

A beautiful spring day in Hakodate saw me getting up very early to locate a small flock of Crossbill which I had found yesterday in Goryokaku Park. I got up to watch the second half of Real Madrid v Spurs and after the 3rd goal went in I'd had enough so off I went outside just as the sun was coming up.

The Crossbills have finally arrived back in town after an absence of more than 2 years. Unfortunately Goryokaku park isn't the best place in which to photograph them as the pine trees there are very tall, these pics where when the flock flew down to nibble on some cherry buds. Not the best Crossbill shots I've managed, I hope they stick around for a couple of weeks, or better still others join them.

I was spoiled 2 years ago when there were several flocks in town including ones in parks with low trees. Also that winter they stuck around for ages exhausting the pine seed crop and ending up having to feed on fallen pinecones on the ground. This probably won't happen this year...........

I hope these or others visit the small park near my flat (which is usually very quiet and also has low trees and lots of pinecones on the ground).

And here's an uncropped one in the distance, the building behind is Goryokaku Tower, well known local eyesore.

Lots of stuff in the park this morning. Flocks of Siskin, Brambling and Hawfinch, lots of Coal Tit and Dusky Thrush, Great Spotted and Grey Headed Woodpeckers. Yesterday there were 3 Pochard on the moat. After breakfast I went on a long walk to check out the sea and local harbours (nothing doing there at all) and to check a couple of other possible Crossbill spots (nothing doing there either, just more Siskin and Brambling).

The electioneering is getting noisier and noisier, only another 4 days of it.

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On this day (April 5th)........................

April 5th 2009. Black Necked Grebes at Shikabe.

The harbour at Shikabe always has lots of this species in late winter/early spring and if you're lucky they'll swim en masse to the corner of the port where you're waiting. The secret is to only move when they all dive.............

They congregate to eat these horrible worms that must slither around on the floor of the harbour..........

2008-2010 were very good in this harbour for this species but 2011 was an absolute stinker, actually I've hardly seen any Black Necked Grebes anywhere in south Hokkaido this winter, just the odd one or two here and there. Slavonian and Red Necked have been thin on the ground too yet strangely Great Crested (usually pretty scarce) have been everywhere. Mysterious.............



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On this day (April 4th)........................

April 4th 2008.

Black Tailed Godwit at Marshside, Lancs UK.

I see these in Hokkaido only occasionally, Bar Tailed Godwits are much commoner. This was one of many at Marshside which was a former haunt of mine back in the early 80's, it had changed a lot since then: the Godwits were sharing the pools with Avocets and Little Egrets, 2 species that were wildly exotic in Lancashire in the early 80's.

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Black and White

A female Black Woodpecker (at Onuma) and an adult Glaucous Gull (at Yakumo). It was a very cold snowy grey kind of day today, winter has returned if only briefly.

Not much at Yakumo, a small flock of Great Egret, a lone Slavonian Grebe, the usual common ducks plus lots of Glaucous Gull. This is one of my fave winter birds, not so many in Hakodate as a rule but there always seem to be plenty in Yakumo. They were at the rivermouth and impossible to approach closely. 

The Black Woodpecker was a nice find at Onuma, the first one i've seen for a while actually. It was very dark though and it flew off after a minute or so. I could only get heavily cropped noisy record shots.

Though I've seen them many times I've only ever gotten decent photos once and that was over 3 years ago. There were lots of Woodpeckers of various species drumming everywhere in Onuma and that combined with the honking of the Whooper Swans made for a nice peaceful atmosphere.

The Black Woodpecker was in the same general area as the common Tits and Nuthatches. These certainly aren't shy.

The birds were scattered by a female Sparrowhawk but all returned 10 minutes later. There was also a Japanese Grosbeak and Hawfinch too but they were even shyer than the Black Woodpecker. The Mandarins were as uncooperative as ever and only allowed record shots, how can something as colourful as this be so shy?

Not a great Sunday for photos as you can see. Continuing the crappy cropped record shot theme of the day........

Great Cormorants (the same as in the UK). They have a bronze sheen in breeding plumage unlike the much commoner green sheen of the Japanese Cormorant (which is usually found on the coast and generally not at freshwater sites). These are I think pretty rare in Hokkaido but Onuma has a small colony of them every summer.........shame they sit out in the middle of the lake all the time.

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Another Osprey

I took a long long almost fruitless walk yesterday. Almost no birds anywhere. the sea was completely devoid of birdlife, a few Siskin, Coal Tit, Daurian Redstart and Dusky Thrush were in the parks and trees but that's all.

This Osprey was fishing at the mouth of the Kameda river.

It dived once, grabbed a fish and immediately dropped it. Unfortunately the AF couldn't keep track of it as it dived so I just have the standard BIF shots which look very similar to the ones from Yakumo a couple of days ago. Every big river has a pair. The Kameda isn't big enough, presumably this was an individual heading north...........

The electioneering has begun for the city and prefectural elections on April 10th. Basically this consists of candidates (or their supporters) driving very slowly and bellowing through loudspeakers (all they say is the candidate's name and the local variant of 'thanks for your support'). It is very annoying, I have a whole week of that to look forward to. Great. And all the election will decide is which incompetent/corrupt middle aged or elderly man will get his sticky hands of the public coffers for a few years.

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A day on the coast

An Osprey at the river mouth in Yakumo this afternoon.

It was a nice spring day, alternating between mild and sunny and cool and foggy. Lots of stuff on the move, skeins of White fronted Geese and smaller flocks of Bean Geese high overhead, flocks of Whooper Swans here and there and large numbers of ducks of many species everywhere. Scaup were abundant in several fishing harbours.

I managed to take a crappy handheld video too.......

I've seen about 20 species of wildfowl this week but not many pictures were worth posting from today. Still no grebes anywhere except loads of Great Cresteds at several locations. This is usually the scarcest of the 4 marine grebe species but this year it has been by far the commonest.

At the river mouth and on several beaches I tried to get some Gull shots. 7 species were present including lots of Glaucous Gulls of various ages.

Dunno why the biggest Gull species is so shy, I could only get BIF shots.

Yu can see how pale they are, especially on a sunny spring day. Indeed the Japanese name is 'shiro-kamome', literally 'white seagull'.

Glaucous Winged Gulls were also common.

And here's one chasing an Osprey.

The Osprey was one of a pair fishing at the river mouth at Yakumo.

At the port at Oshamabe I was surprised to find a flock of 30 or so Dunlin............

There were many common seaduck offshore like these Red Breasted Merganser.......

The day started at Onuma, the Varied Tits were on form here.........

Other stuff at Onuma included a couple of White Tailed Eagles sitting out in the middle of the still frozen section of the lake, Great Cormorant, Whooper Swan, Bean Goose, Smew, Goosander and Pintail, plus the usual Tits and Woodpeckers. At Yakumo there were the usual common ducks, more Swans and at all locations there were singing Skylark, a sign that spring is here......

Yesterday I went to Kamiiso and there was nothing at all really, a lone White Tailed Eagle high overhead and that was about it.

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Spring 2011........

I always have a few days off at the end of March, it can be a good time for birds. The strong westerlies that tend to blow at this time often waft a Hoopoe or 2 over from mainland Asia. Not today, I spent a birdless morning in Yunokawa (it used to be a good place for birds but unfortunately development along the river has ruined it) andso in the afternoon I headed over to Irifune to check out the Brent Geese.

The numbers increase at this time of year (there were about 70 or 80 today) and they are much more active than in winter...................

I fired off lots of BIF shots, it was a bit tricky trying to focus on a fast moving flock against fast changing backgrounds. I should maybe be trying some different settings here, my BIF settings work OK if there is one bird against a clean background but a lot of today's shots ended up in the trash. Perhaps I should enable all focus points or change the tracking priority in the custom functions or something...............

It was a pleasant enough day but pretty windy..........

The Irifune area seemed to have escaped unscathed from the tsunami. I could sit down on the concrete with the fish bones and goose sh*t to get some group shots.

The Harlequin Ducks were still present but as shy as ever.........

Not much else around, some Red Breasted Merganser and several Glaucous Winged Gull in amongst the commoner Gull species.........

I basically have another 3 days off and the weather forecast looks promising so I may go back one more time for the Brent BIFs.

My doorbell rang about an hour ago and it was my neighbours. I've hardly ever spoken to them in all the time I've been living here (8 1/2 years!). They said they would be moving tomorrow and apologised in advance for the noise. I didn't realise I'd been here so long, their kids have grown up and are leaving home, they were snotty nosed elementary schoolkids when we first moved here. God I feel old........

I hope the Japanese government sorts out that power plant ASAP. No radiation up here (so far, fingers crossed and let's hope those westerlies blow a while longer) but c'mon, sort it out FFS.............

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